The Origins of Responsibility [Paperback]

Fran?ois Raffoul approaches the concept of responsibility in a manner that is distinct from its traditional interpretation as accountability of the willful subject. Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it. For Raffoul, responsibility is less about a sovereign subject establishing a sphere of power and control than about exposure to an event that does not come from us and yet calls to us. These original and thoughtful investigations of the post-metaphysical senses of responsibility chart new directions for ethics in the continental tradition.

Raffoul is very persuasive in arguing . . . that Sartre, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derridas philosophies, even when apparently involved in other not immediately ethical pursuits  existentialism, fundamental ontology, metaphysics,deconstruction  contain a fundamentally ethical concern. . . . [A] very fine book.Nov. 2014Raffoul provides a rich genealogy of concepts of responsibility from thinkers in the Continental tradition. . . . Recommended.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Origins of Responsibility
1. Aristotle and What Is Up to Us : Responsibility as Voluntariness
2. Responsibility as Absolute Spontaneity: Kant and Transcendental Freedom
3. The Genealogy of Responsibility: Nietzsches Deconstruction of Accountability
4. The Paradoxical Paroxysm of Responsibility: Sartres Hyperbolic Responsibility
5. For The Other: Levinas Reversal of Responsibility
6. Heideggers Originary Ethics
7. Heidegger and the Ontological Origins of Responsibility
8. Derrida and the Impossible Origins of Responsibility
Conclusion: The Future of Responsibility: The Impossible and the Event
Notes
Index

Raffoul displays throughout considerable skills of reading and exegesis, and he has an important story to tell about the hil3@